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FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Anthony Weiner and his eponymous Twitter “hack”

Friday night Anthony Weiner, Democrat from New York City and Client Number Nine‘s successor in the House (Edit: mixed up my NY Dems, sorry!), had a problem on Twitter. His account, @RepWeiner, had posted on it a rather inappropriate message. It went like so:

The Twitter post and the image on YFrog have since been deleted. To attempt to be delicate about it, the linked photo (posted under Weiner’s YFrog account) was of a man in in somewhat tight-fitting underwear, with just that area of his body visible. Big Government has the photo if you want to judge for yourself.

And to be clear, Weiner is married, and the person the photo was directed at is a 21 year old college student in Washington near the Canadian border. So naturally, Weiner needed to explain this fast. About an hour and a half later, Weiner claimed he’d been hacked. That explanation doesn’t hold up. Here’s why.

A major hat tip goes to Ace of Spades for this. Today on Twitter he completely destroyed the hack claim, and he’s right.

First, he posted three hours before the alleged hack post, and four minutes after. This means he somehow wrested control back from the hackers quickly. How is this possible? That would be quite a feat, either through password guessing or some sort of Twitter security hole. If it happened, why didn’t we hear about how?

Second, if he lost control of the account, standard Twitter practice is to remove the “Verified Account” status until Twitter can confirm the account is back under the control of the named person. Yet, the @RepWeiner account as of this writing is still Verified.

Third, as pointed out the recipient of the photo is somewhere between Seattle and Vancouver, but that evening Weiner posted on Twitter a note about Seattle time. Funny coincidence, that.

Fourth, such hacks these days are crimes, and are especially serious when directed at Members of Congress. If his Twitter account has been compromised, what else would the attackers have access to? Instead of reporting the attack to the FBI though, Weiner has made jokes, and in fact keeps joking about it. This is unreasonable behavior in the face of an actual attack, however if it weren’t hack, then to report one would probably be a crime in itself.

So, Congressman Weiner, it’s up to you: Admit the truth, or file a formal criminal report with the attached penalties for filing a false report. Your own party has been making a big deal about “Cybersecurity” lately as a pretext for an Internet Kill Switch and other power grabs. Set an example, or admit the old Reichstag routine. Your call.

Update: Moe Lane has more on how the “hackers” seem to be deleting the entire online presence of Gennette Nicole, the intended recipient of the original Twitter message.